


empty your sadness

by Sroloc_Elbisivni



Category: Sense8 (TV), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 03:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7204058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/pseuds/Sroloc_Elbisivni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, eight times a member of the cluster told a member of their family their secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	empty your sadness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hinn_Raven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/gifts).



> Lo, these many moons ago, Steph made [this post](http://secretlystephaniebrown.tumblr.com/post/126392167669/secretlystephaniebrown-fuck-but-a-yj-sense8-au) sparking [this au](sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com/tagged/yj8+au) and ten months later, this is the completed fic.  
> A quick rundown on the details: Zatanna is a traveling magician and performer based in Milan, Kaldur is a Greek fisherman living with Garth and Tula (and his some really shady connections through his absent biological dad), Wally is a forensic scientist in Kansas City, Conner works at the Eumundi Wildlife Preserve in Australia (and has some really shady connections through his foster dad), Megan is an aspiring trans actress taking some time off to look after Gar, Artemis was a bouncer in Ho Chi Min City, Raquel is a writer living in Dakota City with her son Amistad, and Dick is an international hacker and thief.  
> Title from "The Kids Aren't Alright."

Dinah Lance has been Zatanna Zatara’s best friend for eleven years, her drinking buddy for eight, and her substitute assistant and tour companion for six. She’s seen the not-only-stage magician in every state you could imagine, from post-almost-demonic-possession to hungover to applause-drunk, and heard the strangest things come out of Zatanna’s mouth, forwards and backwards.

So when the magician announces, after a week of acting even twitchier than she had when her Munich venue had been on top of four convergent ley lines, “I have seven other people in my head,” Dinah barely registers it as she examines a pair of fishnets for tears.

“Mmhmm. I thought you said this building wasn’t haunted.”

“Ghosts don’t exist oh my— _Shut up, Wally, I am trying to have a conversation here._ ”

Dinah looks up very, very slowly. “Um…Zee? Did you develop a split personality disorder? I thought you swore that you hadn’t been near anything from the Vatican’s collection after last time.”

Zatanna has her face covered with her hands, and is taking in deep breaths in and out. “I haven’t. To both. No religious artifacts, no psychosis, but my mind is now linked with seven other people who are all over the world.”

“…Kay.” Dinah tries to remember where she put the local mage’s number as Zatanna starts muttering at thin air.

“No, no, I can _handle_ this—oh my god, shut _up_ , this didn’t go any better for you—will you just let me _talk_? Wait, Dinah!”

Since the last time Zatanna got possessed it nearly got them both killed, Dinah has _carte blanche_ to knock the other woman out if she thinks that something is wrong. She’s moving to punch Zatanna in the jaw when the lines of Zatanna’s face change from their familiar set to something hard and calculating and angry and the magician is not only ducking away from the blow but coming up and using Dinah’s own momentum to flip the martial artist in a move only born of long experience.

Experience Dinah knows for a fact Zatanna not only does not have but adamantly refuses to get.

Dinah is laying on the floor and struggling for breath before five seconds have passed, but she can’t shake a grudging admiration.

“Okay,” Dinah gasps out as she gets to her feet. “I’m listening.”

 

* * *

 

Tula has never lit a fire in a hospital waiting room before.

Of course, before yesterday she’d also never taken tea with a notorious crime boss while the woman’s five year old son sat at the kitchen table and colored with one of her boyfriends, or made a questionably legal plot to free the other from the grasp of his estranged father.

But then, she’s done a lot of things she’d never have predicted doing since Kaldur came home looking like he’d been hit in the face with a dead fish a lot more than usual and dropped an envelope with a thousand euros on the table.

She will admit that babysitting for a crime boss is far preferable to running drugs in his fishing boat, something Tula knows he’s been approached about before.

Since the same crime boss is now helping Tula and Garth break their boyfriend out of the hospital he vanished into three days ago, Tula vows never to breathe a word of complaint about the arrangement again.

The fire doesn’t start in the wastebasket until she’s across the room and innocently poking through a magazine. It only takes one shout of “ _Pirkayiá_!” before alarms start blaring and she can slip into the hallways.

Garth texts her as soon as he can confirm that the ambulance Kaldur was supposed to leave in has been commandeered to transport more critically wounded patients, and Mera follows up only a minute later with the relevant room number.

His room’s guards have already been roped into containment and evacuation, leaving the door clear. Tula takes Garth’s hand for strength before opening it. Everything is going according to plan.

Everything except Kaldur himself, that is.

They waste nearly all of the time they can spare in argument, trying to explain to him what they have found. They share evidence about his father’s shady activities, damning articles written on the institution he is scheduled to be moved to, desperation mounting as he refutes all of it.

Eventually, Tula gives up and just stares at him and shock and horror ( _why, why would you leave us, how could you do this_ ) when Garth, always tempestuous, speaks up in anger.

“Why, Kaldur? What have we done? What is so wrong, that you would rather stay here?”

“What is wrong?” and his voice, always so composed and calm, even while Tula’s heart is slowly torn apart, shakes with emotion. “What is wrong—it has nothing to do with you, I swear. What is wrong is _me_. I see—I see things that are not there, that—that _cannot_ be there! I converse with people I do not know, but who stand in front of me one moment and are vanished the next. You ask why I am here? I saw a man, on the docks, who I did not recognize, but I saw him and I collapsed. I see places I have never been as though I stand in the middle of them, and do impossible things. Dangerous things. I will not hurt you. I cannot even take that chance.” His voice drops. “Do not ask this of me. _Please_.”

They stand there, because what can they say?

Mera opens the door from her place in the hallway. “We are out of time.”

Kaldur turns away from them and stares at the wall. “You should go.”

“ _Agapi mou—”_

“ _Go_.”

They go. What else can they do?

And so three hearts break as the door closes behind them.

Garth is silent as they make their way out of the hospital, but as soon as they’re outside, he speaks to Mera without accusation for the first time Tula can remember.

“Mera, you have had men watching the docks since Kaldur began taking Artur on his boat, yes?”

“I have.”

“Have they been taking pictures?”

**Translations:**

_Pirkayiá_ =Fire!

 _Agapi mou_ = my love

 

* * *

 

Bart hasn’t seen his cousin in two years.

Two years of running and hiding and lying and being afraid every second he’s awake and most of the ones he’s asleep, but the only thing he doesn’t regret is keeping Wally out of this clusterfuck.

Heh. Clusterfuck. That’s a good one.

He reaches out to poke Jaime and share the joke, and then remembers that this is the first time his fellow fugitive has had enough of the good drugs to get the weird other consciousness in his brain to shut down for longer than an hour, so thinks better of it.

He checks his watch. It’s still another forty-seven minutes until the agreed-upon contact time with Donna.

No, wait, forty six.

Stupid watch. Why won’t it move faster?

“ _Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on, stupid bio-electric connection, work!_ ”

Wait. What?

“Wally?” Bart blurts out, just because he’s so surprised.

“Is this thing on?” And suddenly his dorky older cousin is there, family freckles and bright red hair and goofy grin and all. “Yes! It worked!”

Bart jumps to his feet and walks outside because one option is that he’s hallucinating and cold water from the rain barrel will help, and the other option is that his cousin really is here and if he’s going to get to yell at him it’ll have to be where Jaime won’t wake up.

When he pulls his head out of the rain barrel and lets it rest against the rim and drip, he isn’t sure what he’s hoping for.

“You can hear me, right? Cause I mean, this is great and all, getting to see you, but a scientific theory isn’t valid without multiple sources of observation and I am totally _not_ losing this to Zee and her _phenomena_.”

“No—you—you’re not _real_. You can’t be. Go away.”

“Dude.” He knows that Wally has to be frowning. “One, giant step forward in experimentation in cluster-based contact here. Two, is it too much to want to know you aren’t _dead_?”

“ _You never wanted to know before_!” Bart screams, and spins around. “Two years—two years and you never—never even _thought_ to go _looking_ for me? And _now_ you get to show up and act all concerned, only after you’ve tripped into the same crock of shit?”

He expects Wally to yell back, thinks that this will just devolve into another shouting match, and anticipates it with a kind of vicious satisfaction because that way he doesn’t have to think about Wally in the same position as him.

Ecstatic, maybe for weeks, because there are new people in his head, enough to relieve the pressure of his distractible brain bouncing around and around and around. Thrilled to finally have superpowers, to find a family.

Only to wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding as Kori was dragged out of her family’s home in Colombo by the organization they would later learn to call the Light. Only to have her close off her mind to them, and feel like part of his heart had been ripped out.

Only to lose Karen, and then Jason, a week later and four hours apart.

Only to go on the run, without telling anyone, because he wasn’t going to make it any easier for them to track down his new family, and he couldn’t drag his birth family into this.

They caught him, in the end, caught all of them, but now they’re free and running again, and it may only be a matter of time, but Bart isn’t going to fail the second part of his promise.

He isn’t.

But Wally is here, sharing a connection and speaking to him. So it looks like he did.

The only thing Bart can do now is yell, and push, and shove Wally away, because they’re poison, all of them, danger and poison and _bait_ , and he won’t be a tool of the Light any more.

But instead of getting angry (like he’s _supposed_ to), Wally just…deflates.

“Yeah,” he says, quietly. “I guess I do. Because for the first time, I can say something I’ve been waiting to say.

“I’m sorry.”

And Bart knows, _knows_ he should push back and push away and run and run and run, but he’s so tired of running.

So he just steps forward and hugs Wally for the first time in five years.

And he knows that it isn’t real, that it’s all driven by an excess of proteins in the brain that are causing ghost synapses and nerve endings to fire, that all he’s doing is hugging the air.

But it sure feels real.

* * *

 

Conner throws the Frisbee, watching it spin through the air over one of the Eumundi fields. Wolf galumphs after it, making a spectacular leap into the air to catch it before trotting back to his owner.

Conner reaches for the disc to throw it again, but Wolf dances out of his reach, and he lunges for it, laughing. They end up tipped over onto the grass and tussling over it, and Conner manages to grab it back right before they roll into a pile of horse poop.

“Awww, Wolf. These were my favorite boots,” he grumbles, inspecting the damage.

Wolf just wags his tail and licks Conner in the face.

“Geddoff,” he grumbles, shoving the mutt away. “I don’t even want to know what you’ve been eating.”

Wolf yawns, jaws lolling open and tongue hanging out, before he flops down on the grass. He looks like he has the right idea, so Conner joins him and stares up at the sky.

He wonders what the others are doing now.

He wonders if any of them have told anyone else.

He doesn’t have anyone to tell—he hasn’t told Dad anything important in years, because he doesn’t want to see it turned against him as ammunition and most of the time he has the resources to figure it out himself. But not this. This is Conner’s.

Meetings with Clark have been going better, conversation getting easier and less awkward with each coffee or breakfast hangout, and somehow talking with him is better than it ever has been with Dad. Nature over nurture, maybe, or maybe just talking to someone entirely new, someone who doesn’t know what strings to pull. But he doesn’t really want to tell Clark about this either.

And then it occurs to him, and he turns over.

“Hey, Wolf. I’m eight people now.”

Wolf opens one eye lazily, and then just licks him in the face again.

_Guess that’s that._

* * *

 

Marie looks up at the roof’s satellite and crosses her fingers as the Skype call _bloops_ its way to a connection

“Hello!” Megan calls over the video chat. “Oh, is it working? I can’t—oh, there you are.”

“Hey!” Marie says, grinning. “There you are.”

“Me too! Me too!” Gar leans into the frame, beaming. “Hi, Mom! How are the alcelaphinae?”

The alcelaphinae are doing well. The doe with the sprained hind leg is getting better, too.”

“Have you named her yet?”

“Gar, you know we can’t name them. They’re wild animals, not pets.”

“Awww. Noted.”

She talks with Gar about antelopes (according to him, awesome!), monkeys (even more awesome!), gymnastics (the _awesomest!_ ) and school (less awesome).

“Speaking of which, don’t you have homework to do right now?” Megan asks him.

“Awwwww. Do I have to?”

“Yes, you do,” Megan and Marie chorus at the same time. Marie laughs as her daughter looks a little bit horrified at how much she sounds like her foster mother.

“Ugh, _fine_. Love you, Mom!” He waves, blows her a kiss, and then flips out of the frame right before Megan can yelp.

“No gymnastics near the— _Gar!_ ”

Marie can’t help laughing. “You certainly have your hands full!”

Megan sighs and buries her face in her hands. “He’s my brother, and I love him, but sometimes, I just want to _tie him to a chair._ ”

“I’m his mother, and I love him, and believe me, sometimes, I want to do the same. You’re doing fine, Megan.”

“Yes, well—hold on a sec.” Megan stands up and walks out of frame. Marie hears the sound of a closing door before the aspiring actor sits back down. Her face looks serious.

“Ma—Mom, I—do you remember when I was sixteen and I started having those dissociative episodes because of the…thing?”

“I do.” Marie can’t remember the last time Megan talked about her time before transitioning.

“And I talked to you and saw a therapist and—the point I’m trying to make is that you trust me to recognize if that sort of thing started happening again, right?”

“Has it?”

“ _No._ But there’s…something else. I’ve…I’ve started hearing people in my head. Not just hearing them, talking to them! Meeting them, going to other places, having them come _here_ —I know Greek now, it’s weird. And Vietnamese. And French, and Mandarin, Artemis knows _so many_ languages.” She reins herself in, looking guilty. “I—I know it’s real. I didn’t at first, but I do now.”

Marie raises an eyebrow. “How many other people?”

“Um. Seven. Kal, Raquel, Wally, Zatanna, Dick, Artemis, and—” she turns the slightest bit pink. “—Conner.”

“Conner, hmm?” Marie grins and watches Megan’s face go even redder. “And you’re _sure_ this isn’t your idea?”

“I— _Mom!”_

“I’m just saying, I know you always wanted—”

“I am not making this up!”

“Megan—sweetie, I know. It’s okay, I believe you.” She taps her fingers against her lips. “So—these are all different people? With different talents?”

“Yeah. From all over the world.”

“It would make sense. Biology 101, really, the kind of thing the department _looooves_ making me teach because I’m one of the few female professors—not the time. Point is, for natural selection to be effective, you need variation.” She smiles at Megan, full of pride and happiness. “You’ve been thrown together with all these different people to make something entirely new. I can’t wait to see what you’ll make out of it.”

As she talks, the worry slides off of Megan’s face until her expression changes to a fragile smile.

Marie reaches a hand towards the camera, trying to convey how much she wanted to touch her. “Megan, I can’t even imagine going through what this must have put you through. You’ve been so brave, and so strong, and I am so, so proud of you.”

Megan lets out a soft sound and reaches out towards her own side of the camera. “I—thanks, mom. I love you.”

“Just—you’re safe, right? You’re being careful? You’re really going to be okay?”

Megan’s face contorts, for a brief instant, and then she gives a smooth, professional, smile. “Of course we are, Mom.”

Marie has known that Megan was going to pick up a whole slew of skills working as an actress. She’s just always hoped that lying was one Megan would never feel the need to use around her family.

 

* * *

 

Jade tugs her baseball cap lower over her face as she stands next to Roy before continuing to obnoxiously snap photos with her phone, playing up the ‘oblivious tourist’ angle for all it’s worth.

She can practically hear him grinding his teeth, but he doesn’t say anything. She loves when they go undercover.

“Oh, c’mon, Red, you’re too tense. Lighten _up_.” She grabs his shoulder and pulls him down to snap a selfie with her, grinning brightly to contrast his scowl.

“Jade, we don’t have _time_ for this.”

“There’s always time to build our cover. Besides, your little contacts aren’t supposed to be here for another half-hour, right?”

“One of them’s related to you. They’re definitely going to be early,” he grumbles, reaching up to fiddle with his sunglasses and canary-yellow beanie. “God, I feel _blind_.”

“Oh, quit your moping. Most of the world makes do just fine just living in their own…” Cheshire turns her head to follow a blonde ponytail into the crowd near the walls of the church. “…heads. There they are.”

She sidles her way between people, going first in case this is a trap. She doubts it, or at least that Artemis would be a part of it—she wouldn’t trade her sister for Roy’s freedom.

But as delightfully paranoid Roy would point out, people do stupid things for members of their clusters.

Jade watches Artemis lean against the building, next to a pale lanky foreigner in a bright yellow baseball cap. He reaches one freckly hand up to tug at the cap and Artemis jabs her elbow into his side.

Jade can practically hear the whine as he rubs at the spot with one hand.

She chuckles, glances back to get a fix on Roy, and then saunters over to the wall of the church and leans against it a foot away from Artemis.

“Fancy seeing you here, sis,” she murmurs.

Artemis stiffens and her hand lashes out to grab Jade’s wrist. “What are you _doing_ here? And don’t try and tell me this is a coincidence.”

“I…wasn’t planning to. What, my redhead didn’t tell your redhead I was going to be here?”

“Your red—you’re with Roy?” Her hand tightens, and then relaxes. “Of course. _You’re_ Cheshire.”

“Wait, you _know_ Cheshire?” Artemis’s friend asks. He peers at her, sunglasses off to reveal pupils dilated just like Roy’s from the cocktail of what-the-hell that keeps Savage out of their heads.

Artemis grimaces very unprettily. “Wally, this is Jade, alias Cheshire. And…my sister.”

Jade wiggles the fingers of the hand her sister isn’t holding in a death grip at Wally and grins the insincere smile that was at least 30% responsible for her alias.

“Wow. You have a sister. And…that sister is Cheshire. That…” he huffs out a laugh and scrubs at the back of his head. “That…is very low on the list of things I expected. You really weren’t spawned from the depths of hell?”

“Now that’s a rude thing to say about our mother,” Jade drawls. “Accurately describes our father, though. Dear sister, I don’t suppose you could let go of my hand before we draw a crowd?”

Her grip, in fact, tightens.

“Wait, your dad? As in—”

“ _Oh, look._ ” Artemis cuts in with a chilling tone before the sentence can progress into the uncomfortable. “There’s the guy we came to a crowded, vulnerable place for you to talk to. Why don’t you go do that? _Now?_ ”

“Yes, _Wally_ , go talk to Red. My sister and I need to catch up.”

Wally looks from Jade to Artemis and blanches. Jade sneaks a glance and has to raise an eyebrow—her sister has developed an impressive glare since the last time she saw her.

“You’ve got him well trained,” she comments, watching his yellow hat bob its way over to Roy’s matching one.

“Jade.” Artemis slips into Vietnamese, soft and dangerous. “What the hell are you doing here?” She loosens her grip on Jade’s wrist. “Or, more to the point, what the hell were you doing two months ago? Working with _dad?_ ”

“Not by choice,” Jade snaps, yanking her hand back. “And anyway, I _stopped._ I got out.”

“And brought along the guy you were helping to torture?”

“I got him _out_. You don’t get to judge me—”

“I do when know for a fact that if I hadn’t gotten away from Dad fast enough, it could have been _me_ locked up where he was.” Jade can hear her breath catch and see her eyes widen.

“You think I don’t know that?” Jade hisses.

Artemis goes from shock to anger fast enough to give Jade whiplash. “You—“ She stops and breathes. “You knew. You run out, and don’t bother to get in touch, don’t bother to—to _acknowledge_ my _existence_ for fourteen years, don’t even bother to check in on _mom,_ start working with _dad_ , and you _knew I had people talking in my head and was being hunted down for it?”_

“You’re raising your voice in a crowded place. Great way to avoid attention there, Artemis.” Jade will not be made to feel guilty by her little sister. She won’t. She’s made her choices, she’s lived with them, and she does not feel guilty over them.

She won’t.

“You—” Artemis looks like she wants to throw up her hands. “I can’t deal with this! I. cannot. Deal with this. I can’t deal with you. You just—just show up like this, and—”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Jade hisses. “I thought he’d told you. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“Well, we all know how your good intentions _always_ work out the way they’re supposed to.” Artemis slumps against the pink wall of the church and sighs.

Jade joins her and they stare at where their respective redheads are arguing over a notebook.

“They’re idiots,” Artemis mutters.

“Complete idiots,” Jade agrees.

About twelve more tourists snap pictures before she says anything else.

“For what it’s worth, if it had been you locked up, I would totally have broken you out.”

Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.

“For what it’s worth…thanks.”

* * *

 

Amistad drags the green pen down the newspaper, careful not to tear it, and when it doesn’t leave behind any ink, he tosses it into the trash.

“This one’s out too, Mom,” he calls out, before pulling another one out of the pile. He thinks this one was supposed to be purple, but testing it makes some sort of vaguely-mud colored stuff come out, so he has to think very hard about whether they need a mud-colored pen.

“Mom, do we have any mud pens?” he yells.

“Does this look like a farm?”

“No, a pen that looks like mud.”

Mom doesn’t say anything, so he calls out again, “I said, a pen that _looks_ like—”

“I heard you, baby.” She sticks her head out of the bedroom. “I just need to call someone, so can you be quiet for a sec?”

“Do you want to keep the pen?”

“Yes, you can keep the pen.” She ducks back inside and closes the door, and Amistad goes back to testing all the pens.

He can hear Mom raising her voice at someone over the phone, but it doesn’t last long, so he doesn’t worry about it.

He’s almost done with the pens when she comes back out looking exasperated and tired. She settles down on the floor next to him and watches him circle all the “ands” in the articles with a blue pen.

“Amistad, baby, how would you feel about having company?”

Amistad perks up. “Is dad visiting?”

“No, honey.” Her lip curls down a little bit.

“Is Mr. Freeman staying here?”

Mom laughs at that. “Mr. Freeman doesn’t need to stay here. He’s got his own place, much bigger than ours.”

“Oh.” Amistad is all out of guesses. “Who?”

“Well.” She lets out a little huff. “How would you feel if I told you I had seven other mes, all over the world?”

Amistad’s eyes go wide. Seven other Moms?

“Well, that isn’t quite right.” He can see her turning the words over in her head, like she does when she’s writing. “I’m still me, and they aren’t exactly me, but we can hear each other thinking, and talk to each other, and visit each other, no matter how far away we are. And they’re all a part of me now. You remember when I had that really bad headache and you had to go stay with Grandma?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That was the start of it.”

He cuddles in closer to her and thinks. “This isn’t one of your books, right?”

“No, it’s not one of my books.”

“It’s not like Adoni’s mom, right?”

“How did you even—no, it’s not like Eva. You’re gonna meet one of them soon. He’s coming for a visit. Says he has to get out of Gotham.”

“What’s his name?”

He can feel her take a big breath, and then let it out. “Dick. His name’s Dick.”

“He won’t get my bed, right?”

She starts laughing before pulling him in for a hug and kissing him on the head. “That boy is going to take the damn couch and like it.”

* * *

 

“Hey.”

Dick lets the word fall like a stone in the air as he stands, head bowed, on the grass.

He shuffles his feet and shoves his hands deeper in his pockets, staring at where the gravestone meets the lawn. The words feel like they’re dragging their way out of his throat.

“It’s me.

“I know I haven’t been by in a while, but I needed to tell you that…I’m leaving. Gotham. For a month, at least. Probably longer. Got the travel bug.” He scoffs. “Plus, I… _may_ have let the law catch up to me. Not all the way, but too close for comfort. I could use the breathing room. Who knew being a criminal would be so hard, huh?”

He catches himself grinning, and has to clear his throat before continuing.

“Anyways, yeah. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m going, and I don’t know when I’ll make it back.” _Or ‘if’._ “So. Goodbye.”

Dick turns around and walks between the rows of headstones, towards the gate.

He makes it past the marble pillars that hold up the gates before pausing at the road.

His bike is only twenty yards away, duffle already tied on the back. His apartment is packed up and cleared of any evidence, his bank accounts are either cleared out or hidden, his goodbyes have all been said, and his ticket is already booked for a flight to Houston. He can catch a bus there to Dakota City—make the trail a little more confusing. Raquel’s expecting him.

Everything is ready. All he has to do is go.

Inside his pockets, his hands curl into fists.

It’s late enough that no one is there to see him go tearing off across the cemetery at a dead run.

Dick skids to a stop on the turf and bends over, catching his breath. “No. No, no, I am _not_ leaving it there. What the fuck, Jason? Why didn’t you ever _tell_ me? Or Bruce? We would have helped, you _know_ we would have.

Once he’s started, he can’t stop, so he just keeps going.

“Is that what was happening? Is this what you were going through? How long did you spend thinking that we’d never understand you?

“And not just then, but _afterwards,_ you just—you just _vanished._ Do you have any idea—any _idea_ what it was _like_ to have you just up and disappear, and then get a call telling us you were dead?” Dick gives the ground a vicious kick. “Believe me. _Not_ traught. At all.

“I’ve been looking for any trace of you for years, and then suddenly the biggest clue I’ve ever gotten just up and blasts itself into my head one night, and now I can’t turn around without running into your ghost. I don’t…”

All his words run out, and Dick sits down hard, burying his face in his hands. “I don’t know what to _do_.”

There’s no answer. There never is.

But Dick sits there anyways, as the last traces of twilight fade into the murky Gotham night.

**Author's Note:**

> Oops. That got sad.  
> Alcelaphinae are a subfamily of mammal that include wildebeest and a couple of kinds of gazelles.  
> Also, there are no brown pens. Why are there no brown pens?  
> These segments go in chronological order. The full timeline parallels the canon of Sense8 season 1, with Kaldur in Nomi's place and (not shown) Wally in Riley's. The Wally-abducted-by-the-Light happened sometime between Conner's section and Megan's.  
> If you want to know more, [I would love to talk about this verse on Tumblr!](sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com)


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